Out of the Darkness

Still astonished, he obeyed. When he got into the passenger compartment, she closed the door behind him, then scrambled up to her seat. The cab began to roll. Sure enough, she could manage a horse.

Streets were rougher than Sabrino remembered. That wasn’t the cab’s elderly springs; it was poorly repaired holes in the roadway. Some of them hadn’t been repaired at all. Jounces made his teeth click together.

Everything seemed more soot-stained than Sabrino remembered, too. The reason for that wasn’t hard to find, either. Charred ruins were everywhere, sometimes a house or a shop, sometimes a block, or two, or three. The air stank of stale smoke. Just breathing made Sabrino want to cough.

There was the jeweler’s shop where Sabrino had had a ring-booty he’d taken in Unkerlant-repaired for his mistress. No, there was the block where the shop had stood, but only wreckage remained. He hoped Dosso had got out. He’d been doing business with the jeweler since just after the Six Years’ War.

Most of the people on the street were women. Sabrino had seen that on earlier leaves. It stood out even more strongly now. Even some of the constables were women. The rest were graybeards who looked to have been summoned from retirement. Most of the men not in uniform limped or went on crutches or had a sleeve pinned up or wore a patch over one eye or had some other obvious reason for not being at the front. Everyone seemed to be wearing somber clothing-some the dark gray of mourning, others shades of blue or brown hard to tell from it in the sad winter light. Women’s kilts had got longer, too. Sabrino let out a silent sigh.

The cab rattled to a stop. “Here you go, Colonel,” the driver said. Sabrino got out. The driver descended to hand him his bag. He tipped her more than he would have if she were a man. She curtsied and climbed up again to go look for her next fare. Sabrino went up the walk and used the brass knocker to knock on his own front door.

When a maidservant opened it, she squeaked in surprise and dropped him a curtsy more polished than the one he’d got from the cabby. “Your Excellency!” she exclaimed. “We had no idea …”

“I know, Clarinda,” Sabrino answered. “It’s not always easy to send messages from the front. But I’m here. The Unkerlanters haven’t managed to turn the lady my wife into a widow quite yet. Is Gismonda at home?”

Clarinda nodded. “Aye, my lord Count. Nobody goes out as much as we did. . beforehand. Let me go get her.” She hurried away, calling, “Lady Gismonda! Lady Gismonda! Your husband’s home!”

That brought servants from all over the mansion to clasp Sabrino’s hand and embrace him. The last time he’d had such a greeting, he thought, was when he’d managed to escape the Unkerlanters after they blazed down his dragon.

“Let me through,” Gismonda said, and the cooks and serving girls parted before her as if she were a first-rank mage casting a powerful spell. Sabrino’s wife gave him a businesslike hug. She was a few years younger than he; she’d been a beauty when they wed, and her bones were still good. She would have hated being called handsome, but the word fit her. After looking Sabrino up and down, she nodded in brisk approval. “You seem better than you did the last time they let you come home.”

“I was wounded then,” he pointed out. “You look very good, my dear-and you don’t look as if you were about to go to a funeral.” Gismonda’s tunic and kilt were of a bright green that set off her eyes and the auburn hair that, these days, got more than a little help from a dye jar.

Her lip curled. “I don’t much care for what people call fashion these days, and so I ignore it. Some fools do cluck, but the only place I care about hens is on my supper plate.” She turned to the head cook. “Speaking of hens, have we got a nice one you can do up for the count’s supper tonight?”

“Not a hen, milady, but a plump capon,” he replied.

Gismonda looked a question to Sabrino. His stomach answered it by rumbling audibly. As if he’d replied with words, Gismonda nodded to the cook. He went off to get to work. Gismonda asked Sabrino, “And what would you like in the meanwhile?”

He answered that without hesitation: “A hot bath, a glass of wine, and some clean clothes.”

“I think all that can probably be arranged,” Gismonda said. By the look she gave the servants, they would answer to her if it weren’t.

Sabrino was soaking in a steaming tub-luxury beyond price in the wilds of Unkerlant or Yanina-when the bathroom door opened. It wasn’t a servant; it was his wife, carrying a tray on which perched two goblets of white wine. She gave Sabrino one, set the other on the edge of the tub, and went out again, returning a moment later with a stool, upon which she perched by the tub. Sabrino held up his goblet in salute. “To my charming lady.”